Fox Chase Away Cancer 5K Recap

On Friday night, after a night of drinks, I went to bed around 11:30pm with my compression socks on.  Lately if I wear them at night, my runs in the morning are much easier.  Many of you know that I have multiple pairs of the Pro Compression marathon socks.  These are by far the BEST of the best.  I wore my pinks ones to bed in hopes that by morning my tired legs would feel better!

My alarm went off at 6am, and I slowly got out of bed.  I had my morning coffee and relaxed in bed until around 7, when I finally decided to get dressed.  My outfit for this 5K was my Lucy Activewear top, Old Navy capris, Asics socks, Lululemon headband, and my Nike sneakers.

The race was at a school in Jenkintown, PA so it didn’t take too long to get there.  The weather was very humid, but overcast in the high 80s.  That meant that although the sun wasn’t beating down on my face, it was still super hard to breathe.  After I checked in at registration, I stopped to have a brief chat with Mike, the President of the HCM Foundation, who hosted the event.  His father passed away from Colon cancer when Mike was an infant.  After chatting with Mike, I sat down near the track to stretch for a bit.

Fifteen minutes before the race started, everyone gathered in the parking lot to listen to the story of a breast cancer survivor who has been touched by the HCM Foundation personally.  It was nice to hear from someone first hand who benefited from such an amazing organization.

At a little after 9, the 5K was underway. It was probably the smallest 5K I’ve ever done with just under 200 runners.  I didn’t mind though, because less runners meant less crowding during the first half mile.

Around mile 1, I found a woman who was running the same pace as me.  She said she was trying to break 28:00.  I was trying to get under 30:00, so I knew running with her would hopefully make my PR happen.  I ran faster than her up the hills, but she quickly caught up to me on the flat surfaces.  She was great!  Every time she saw me start walking or slow down, she said “Let’s go we got this!”

The course itself was pretty hilly at times, but then evened out towards the end.  It started at the parking lot of the school, went through a neighborhood and ended up with a half lap around the track.

So, you’re probably wondering how I did right?  Okay well the heat kind of got to me and I was dripping  with sweat at the end.  I ended up finishing in 28:52 !!!  I reached my goal of running a 5K in under 30 minutes and obviously also PR’d.  I actually didn’t find out my time until later on Saturday night.  My iPhone was going crazy for whatever reason and my songs were going at double the speed at times and then shutting off all together.  Around mile 1, I ripped my headphones out of my ears and went music-less.

Post-race was great too.  They had a big selection of foods:  Panera bagels, fruits from Wegmans, water, and Body Armor sport drinks.  I ate a blueberry bagel and half of a banana while sitting in the grass cooling down.

After the 5K run and 1 mile walk was over, the kids had a race around the track.  It was so cute to see all the little ones run so fast!  They all did so good!

I really had a great time during this race and will probably run it again next year to try and beat my time.

Have you run a really good race lately?
What’s your 5K PR?